The Value of Running

A philosophical perspective on why running is worth it.

The book won't make you run faster," says Mark Rowlands, author of Running with the Pack (Pegasus, 2013). "But if you are a runner who wants to understand the value of what you are spending large swaths of your life doing, then this will help."

Rowlands, a professor of philosophy at the University of Miami and author of The Philosopher and the Wolf, argues that while many begin running for an "instrumental" value--to lose weight, gain fitness, stay sane, prepare for a race, or, in his case, provide an outlet for the boundless energy of his three big dogs--eventually, "if you run long and hard enough" you discover its intrinsic value, as something to be enjoyed for its own sake. And learning to appreciate that intrinsic value helps you to recognize and appreciate intrinsic value throughout life, in an age where everything tends to be judged only on its usefulness, what it can do for us.

In stories and reflections from his own life, starting from a childhood romp up a mountain and ending with the Miami Marathon, Rowlands reveals the deepening levels of running experience. In the "Cartesian phase," based on the theories of Rene Descartes, there's a separation between mind and body. The mind bargains with the body, telling it lies and coercing it along. As the run takes over, runners experience the "Humean phase," named after philosopher David Hume, who saw humans as bundles of thoughts and emotions without a directing force. This describes the point when runners aren't thinking; they're simply experiencing thoughts that come from nowhere. The deepest level, called the "Sartrean phase," after Jean-Paul Sartre, occurs only when the runner completely subsumes in the run, such as might occur in the final stages of a marathon. Here, the self has shrunk to nothing, and runners experience the freedom of knowing that no reasons can make them stop; they are "beyond the authority of reasons."

Heady stuff, yes, but the book doesn't require a degree in philosophy to understand. References to Nietzsche and Heidegger are balanced with eloquent descriptions of runs and reflections on aging, death, love and child rearing from a runner's perspective.

But it's his characterization of the mental states of running that long-term runners will recognize most and appreciate, like this description of the heartbeat of a run:

If I am thinking at all when I run, this is a sign of a run gone wrong--or at least, of a run that has not yet gone right. The run does not yet have me in its grip. I am not yet in the heartbeat of the run; the rhythm of the run has not done its hypnotic work. On every long run that has gone right, there comes a point where thinking stops and thoughts begin. . . . Running is the open space where thoughts come to play.

Or this passage on the joy of charging up a hill:

On that hill, dying, gasping for breath, in mute lactic agony--at that precise moment in time, there was nothing in the world I would rather be doing. I ran that hill for one reason only: to run it. And that is the clue to the final cause of running. You and I may run for many reasons, but the purpose--the final cause--of running is always the same. At its best, and at its purest, the purpose of running is simply to run.

For the philosophically inclined athlete, Running with the Pack takes the reader down revealing paths rarely explored elsewhere. For any runner, the book will echo and affirm their experience as they run through life.